Chapter 3: Chinook Salmon

CHAPTER 3 Chinook Salmon

This Chapter shall apply to the period from 2019 through 2028 (the "Chapter Period"). 1. The Parties agree that:

(a) Chinook stocks that are subject to this Treaty have varying levels of status with many being healthy and meeting goals for long-term production while others are identified as conservation concerns, including some in the U.S. Pacific Northwest that are listed under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA) and some in Canada that are assessed to be at increasing risk of extinction;

(b) fishery management measures that are implemented under this Treaty are intended to be appropriate for recovering, sustaining, and protecting Chinook salmon stocks in Canada and the U.S. and are responsive to changes in productivity of Chinook salmon stocks associated with environmental conditions;

(c) while fishing has contributed to the decline of some Chinook stocks, the continued status of Chinook stocks that are considered depressed generally reflects the long-term cumulative effects of other factors, particularly chronic habitat degradation, in some instances deleterious hatchery practices, cyclic natural phenomena, and large scale environmental variability affecting both marine and freshwater habitats;

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(d) successful Chinook conservation, restoration, and harvest management depends on a sustained and bilaterally coordinated program of resource protection, restoration, enhancement, and utilization based on:

(i) science-based fishery management regimes that foster healthy and abundant Chinook stocks by contributing to the restoration and rebuilding of depressed natural stocks while providing opportunities to harvest sustainably abundant natural stocks as well as abundant hatchery produced fish,

(ii) the implementation of protective and remedial actions identified in local and regional recovery planning processes that address nonfishing factors that limit the abundance, productivity, genetic diversity, or spatial structure of natural Chinook salmon stocks,

(iii) scientifically sound enhancement activities that provide mitigation to fisheries for habitat loss or degradation, or improve productivity through the appropriate use of artificial propagation and supplementation techniques, and

(iv) the continued modification of fisheries to maintain or increase the overall harvest rates exerted on hatchery-origin Chinook, where desirable, while simultaneously decreasing or maintaining limits on the overall mortality rates on natural-origin Chinook;

(e) a healthy and productive Chinook resource imparts sustainable benefits for the fisheries of both Parties, contributes other social, economic, and cultural benefits to both Parties, and provides ecosystem benefits to other species;

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(f) the harvest levels and other fishery management approaches used to target healthy natural and hatchery stocks while constraining impacts on depressed natural stocks, including various spatial and temporal fishery shaping measures that are bilaterally coordinated as necessary, coupled with improvements in fishery management programs prescribed or referred to in this Chapter, are intended to complement recovery actions that are undertaken in the fishing and non-fishing sectors in Canada and the U.S.; and

(g) changes in ocean and freshwater conditions, stock-specific cohort survivals, stock abundances, and stock distribution are being observed. To the extent practical, the Parties shall consider these sources of uncertainty to avoid unwarranted escalation of Chinook mortalities.

2. The Parties shall: (a) implement a comprehensive and coordinated Chinook fishery management program that: (i) uses an abundance-based framework to manage all Chinook fisheries that are subject to this Chapter, (ii) is responsive to significant changes in the productivity of Chinook salmon stocks associated with environmental conditions,

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(iii) uses harvest regimes based on annual indices of abundance that are responsive to changes in production, that take into account all fishery induced mortalities, and that are designed to meet maximum sustainable yield (MSY) or other agreed biologically-based numeric escapement or exploitation rate objectives, including those set out in Attachment I,

(iv) contributes to the improvement in trends in spawning escapements of depressed Chinook salmon stocks and is consistent with improved Chinook salmon production,

(v) considers the limitations of regulatory systems, including the need for timely Commission decisions that are necessary for the Parties to cooperate in management,

(vi) seeks to preserve biological diversity of the Chinook salmon resource and contributes to the restoration of currently depressed stocks by improving the abundance, productivity, genetic diversity, and spatial structure of stocks over time,

(vii) specifies fishery management obligations to maintain healthy stocks, to rebuild depressed naturally spawning stocks, and to provide a means for sharing the harvest and the conservation responsibility for Chinook salmon stocks coast-wide between the Parties,

(viii) develops additional biological information pursuant to a program of work and incorporates that information into the coast-wide management regime, and considers the latest scientific information developed in each Party's recovery planning processes,

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(ix) includes a commitment to discuss within the Commission significant management changes1 that a Party is considering that may alter the stock or age composition and incidental mortality of a fishery regime's catch;

(b) maintain a joint Chinook Technical Committee (the "CTC"). The CTC shall report, unless the Parties otherwise decide, to the Commission. The CTC shall, inter alia:

(i) at the request of the Commission, evaluate management actions and report:

(A) if there is a concern about the consistency of the actions with the measures set out in this Chapter, or

(B) on the effectiveness of the actions in attaining the specified objectives,

(ii) report annually on catches, terminal exclusions, hatchery add-ons, harvest rate indices, estimates of incidental mortality, and exploitation rates, that apply best available information to account for mark-selective fishery (MSF) impacts for all Chinook fisheries and stocks harvested within the Treaty area,

(iii) report annually on naturally spawning Chinook stocks in relation to the agreed MSY or other agreed biologically-based escapement objectives, rebuilding exploitation rate objectives, or other metrics, and evaluate trends in the status of stocks and report on progress in the rebuilding of naturally spawning Chinook stocks,

1 The model configuration from March 2018 (CLB1804) shall be used to establish a baseline run. The Parties shall document specific concerns or inconsistencies between that configuration and the management regime in 2018.

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